TODAI SPEECH ( March 28, 2006 )Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
For it has been one of the greatest pleasures associated with JAMI thatpeople who were at the start only colleagues slowly became friends. We arehere all together tonight to celebrate the Seki Kowa Prize awarded to JAMI by
the Mathematical Society of Japan; we, the four JAMI representatives, are very
pleased at this sign of recognition and Support, and express our great gratitude
for the prize.
In the U.S., it is customary on such occasions to give thanks to all people
associated with the project and so I begin by thanking first of all the entire
Japanese mathematical community for, if it were not such an active, interesting and productive group, there would have been no point and little interestin organizing the JAMI programs. Second, I must mention the important absent people connected with JAMI. I mean the late Professor Kodaira Kunihiro
whose contribution will be described below, and Professor Igusa Jun-ichi, who
was the Founding Director of JAMI, who set from the beginning the very highest intellectual standards and who guided the first halting steps of the youngorganization. Professor Igusa, thankfully, is very much alive and quite well,although-regretfully - he decided that his health did not permit such a tiringtrip. I have been asked, for the sake of the younger people here tonight who
were not present during the first years of JAMI, to give a brief history. But I
must also name all the individuals who deserve thanks. If I forget a few, I regret
it very much and ask their kind forgiveness.
So, to begin, I became Chairman of the Johns Hopkins Mathematics department in 1985. In the U.S., a chair’s term lasts at least 3 years; so, a newchairman has the time, if he wishes, to try to accomplish new things and do
more than the routine business of administering the department. At this point,
two heroes appeared and I am very glad that they are here tonight to hear mesing their praise. They are, of course, Jack Morava and Steve Wilson who cameto me with a brilliant idea. They said: “We have here at Johns Hopkins two
excellent Japanese professors, Igusa and Ono. They studied at the best institutions in Japan and are friends with all the best Japanese mathematicians. Asa result, our department has had, over the years, a steady stream of wonderfulmathematical visitors from Japan. Why not try to systematize this, formalize it
into an Institute, and have it become one of the main and continuing activitiesof our department?” I immediately understood the value of their suggestion.
Here was a great project, one of the innovative things that a new chairman
could try to accomplish. So we spoke to the department about this and, aftertheir approval, I spoke to the Dean....and spoke......and spoke....He was verykind; he agreed that we had a wonderful idea, BUT it needed $ to realize, andhe had no $. This lasted two years until, finally, I asked for his permission
to by-pass him and present the project directly to the President of the Johns
Hopkins University, Steven Muller. He agreed. So I made an appointment tosee President Muller. I was very nervous; although I was no longer very young,
I was not accustomed to dealing with upper administrators of the university.
My only suit, dating from my first wedding, was still in good condition, but I
was NOT: it was not too small, but I was too big! I purchased a new suit, anda new tie. The tie was a slight problem: in the U.S., business people who try
to impress others wear bright red ties, called “power ties”. I considered thisbut thought it was not subtle enough. I chose a yellow tie, the one I am stillwearing tonight; yellow is the color of hope and also the color of gold- a muchneeded commodity! President Muller was not uniformly liked by the faculty,
but he had a great quality for our purposes; he very much liked international
projects. I presented the JAMI project which had been refined and developedwith the help of Morava and Wilson, as well as Igusa and Ono, emphasizing
how well it fitted President Muller’s ideas on internationalism. To the dismayof his assistants who would have preferred to consider the project at greater
length, he said: “You have now awaited an answer for two years. It is time fora decision. How much do you need to begin?” I was, of course, ready with ananswer to that question and gave it to him. He tripled it and added a little,
saying “You can have $500,000 for the first three years, but after that, you areon your own: you will have to find the money elsewhere. Agreed?” How can
one refuse a half-million $ falling in one’s lap? Ever since, I call my yellow tie
the “half-million $ tie.” I rushed back to the department, saw Steve Wilson andtried to explain to him, although I was shaking with excitement, what had justhappened. Thus was JAMI born; I did not yet realize it but a great door had
just opened, and wonderful things were awaiting inside.
I have perhaps emphasized my own role too much, and for that I apologize.
Now the real team eﬀort was necessary, and the wisdom, knowledge and visionof Professors Igusa, Ono, Morava and Wilson were essential. Professor Igusa’s
choice as Director was almost obvious. The programs of what came to be called
Years I, II and III were chosen, focusing on areas where Japan was doing exciting
things. An Inaugural Conference featuring a galaxy of mathematical stars fromall over the world was organized. Various advisory committees were formed.
Professors Hironaka and Reischauer agreed to become Honorary Presidents.
We are very grateful to all, both in Japan and the U.S., who consented to help
us. These things, although they required a great deal of thought and work, wererelatively easy. Soon, however, we were no longer able to avoid the much hardertask: what about Years IV, V, VI and later ones? We needed to raise funds on

a major scale. Professor Igusa discussed the problem with his old friend andcolleague (who had spent several years at Johns Hopkins before returning toJapan), Professor Kodaira. He agreed to help indirectly for his weak health did
not allow him more. Professor Kodaira turned to younger colleagues, Professors
Iitaka Shigeru and Ochiai Takushiro, and asked them to help us. They agreed
and developed a fundraising plan for JAMI. Igusa and I came to Tokyo and they
helped us to visit many business leaders. Professor Shimada Nobuo introduced
us to Mr. Toyoda Shoichiro. We received many refusals, of course, but also
many generous gifts. The Japanese economic bubble was in healthy condition,business people were in optimistic and generous mood, and we were promising
to use the funds only to help Japanese mathematicians visit America. As an“o-mikuji” we purchased at a shrine had told us, “we were walking under apink cloud and would be successful in our endeavors,” but it had also warned usthat we “should be aware of our limitations,” a point Igusa raised whenever I
attempted to convince him to do more. After an exhausting two-week stay, andwith the help of Iitaka, Ochiai, Shimada and others, we returned to Baltimore
with a small treasure which would help JAMI survive an additional year or two.
I should also mention that Professor Hironaka had kindly opened an accountin his Foundation, JAMS, for JAMI, so that Japanese donations could flow
through it on a tax-exempt basis, which was a powerful help.
Time is passing, and I must skip details, but I want to thank the many people
who helped during numerous trips to Japan since then. Foremost among them,
Professor Iitaka who was a very kind host at Gakushuin University, Professors Morita, Noguchi and Ishii at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Professor
Nishida at Kyoto University, Professor Nishikawa at Tohoku University, andagain Professor Shimada who accompanied me on a second visit to Toyota Motors, although his health was not very good. Also Professors Iitaka and ShimizuYuji who generously made contributions of their own funds.
To all these people, who had accepted the spirit of JAMI, I and other members of our department owe a tremendous debt for helping us to build, in thewords of Nitobe Inazio, a bridge across the Pacific, for the mathematical communities.
It is also customary, in the U.S., to make some jokes in such a speech, andI have been too serious, so please let me tell a funny but true story. When
my term as Department Chairman ended, Igusa wanted me to continue helping
him and thought that I needed an oﬃcial title for this, so he asked me to be
Vice-Director of JAMI. I agreed and so we needed to prepare a new “meishi”(visiting card) for the new title. The English side was easy; The Japanese notso easy. With the help of a Japanese person, we wrote it but he said he was notsure of some characters and to please have it checked. When I asked a Japanese
student to proofread it, he burst out laughing: “You are not Vice-Director, you
are the Happy Director!” for the word FUKU can be written in at least two
Kanji, one of which means “Assistant” and the other means “Happy”, and thewrong character had been chosen. So the correction was made and I became
again Vice-Director. Now, of course, I have retired and no longer have oﬃcial
titles: I am not director, I am not vice-director, but, with the help of the MSJ
and its Seki Kowa Prize, I am very much the “Happy Director emeritus” ofJAMI.
When I retired a few years ago, I wrote to all Japanese mathematicians
who had been active in JAMI, a long letter of thanks and farewell, my “firstswansong.” I am very pleased and grateful that the MSJ has enabled me to givethis “second swansong.”
And now we face the future. It is in your hands, both American andJapanese. I look forward to much further success.
Jean-Pierre Meyer